Artistic director Ramón Alayo
Artistic director Ramón Alayo

The Founder of Alayo Dance Company

Ramón Ramos Alayo is a dancer, teacher, choreographer, and the founder and artistic director of the Alayo Dance Company and CubaCaribe. Ramos was selected by the Cuban government to study dance in Santiago de Cuba at age eleven.

In 1990 he earned a masters degree in contemporary and folkloric dance and dance education from the Havana’s National School of Art. He was the principal dancer with Danza del Caribe, Narciso Medina Contemporary Dance Company and performed in Cuba, Europe, Canada, Belize, and the U.S.

Since moving to California in 1997, he has performed with some of the most respected choreographers in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Robert Henry Johnson, Kim Epifano, Sara Shelton Mann, Joanna Haigood/Zaccho Dance, and Robert Moses’ Kin.

Ramon currently teaches Cuban popular dance, Afro-Cuban modern dance, and children’s movement at several local dance studios and schools, and is artistic director of Alayo Dance Company and CubaCaribe.

In 2002, Ramos founded the Alayo Dance Company. As director and choreographer, his work is an innovative fusion of Afro-Cuban modern, folkloric, and popular Cuban dance. He eloquently articulates his aesthetic vision through a synthesis of these dance styles, citing from each traditions, movements, narratives, and concepts indicative of Cuban culture.

In 2003 Ramos co-founded and became artistic director of CubaCaribe, a non-profit with the mission to preserve and promote the rich cultural and artistic traditions of the Carribbean and its diaspora. Alayo Dance Company is the resident company of CubaCaribe.

Ramos has choreographed and produced nine full-length dance performances: Anorañza de Una Epoca (1999); Mis Sueños, Mis Ideas (2003, 2004); A Piece of White Cloth (2004, 2005); La Madre (2005); After Rain (2006); Three Threes & Traces (2007); Blood+Sugar (2008); Bound Together (2009) and Migrations (2010). Alayo Dance Company was featured in “Dance Across America,” published in National Geographic (2006).

Ramos has received support for his work from San Francisco Arts Commission, Theater Bay Area, Alliance for California Traditional Arts, California Arts Council, Zellerbach Family Foundation, LEF Foundation, Walter and Elise Haas Fund, and the prestigious Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation’s “Emerging Choreographer Award.”

Ramos was recently awarded the San Francisco Arts Comission’s Operational Project Grant for the Fifth Annual CubaCaribe Festival (2009). Ramos was nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award nominee for the ensemble performance of Los Guedes, performed at CubaCaribe Festival (2006) and is a winner of a Bay Guardian Goldie (2010).